GenePeeks: startup uncovers risky sperm bank matches. A startup can help identify recessive diseases that might show up in the children of women and sperm-bank donors, Technology Review reports. Sperm donors are already screened for a handful of genetic conditions, and recipients can choose donors based various other kinds of qualities. Within the next year, GenePeeks would like to offer clients a genetic-analysis service that can show how donor DNA would combine with the recipient’s DNA. A technology called DNA-scanning microarrays examine roughly 250,000 DNA bases in the genomes of donors and recipients.Then, based on how DNA is mixed and divided during egg and sperm formation, the company can compute thousands of virtual child genomes.Each of these virtual genomes can be analyzed for disease risks, and potential donors that produced virtual babies that inherited a genetic disease can then be excluded by the mother-to-be.
Who’s excluded will differ from client to client. The service will likely cost less than $1,000. [Via Technology Review] DNA: making counterfeiting, theft much more difficult. London's holiday valuables could be safer from theft this year. Applied DNA Science, a U.S. provider of biological anti-counterfeiting technology, has partnered with the UK Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) to offer DNA-based property marking kits available to residents who reside in neighborhoods with high burglary rates. Applied DNA's deal was the MPS was announced on Friday.
The MPS has utilized its technology to prosecute 50 cash transit hijackings to conviction; every prosecution was successful. Couriers rigged cashboxes to spray the company's uncopyable plant-based DNA on stolen bills, which a U.S. national lab tried but failed to duplicate under a Defense Department directive, said Dr. Jim Hayward, Applied DNA's CEO.
London residents will use the same unique DNA to mark and register their belongings with the MPS. Any stolen goods could be traced to a specific crime scene, and that should help to deter theft, Hayward said. The company recently scored a contract with the U.S. Soon, everybody will be sequenced. It’s nearly time. The whole human genome -- all 3 billion letters -- can be decoded for $1,000 and in just a few hours. And soon, it’ll actually make sense to include genetic scans in routine medical care. Eliza Strickland reports for IEEE Spectrum. When the first human genome was decoded by the Human Genome Project 10 years ago, it took 13 years and $3 billion. In some hospitals right now, cancer patients are having their genomes checked before their doctors decide on treatment. Genome scans of newborns with life-threatening problems can help doctors figure out what’s wrong before it’s too late.
Researchers around the world are sequencing thousands of people with autism and diabetes, hoping to identify genetic variations specific to those conditions. Soon, Ion Torrent’s Jonathan Rothberg says, everybody will be sequenced -- probably as infants -- and will be able to make diet, lifestyle, and medical choices based on specific information, rather than on hunches about vulnerabilities. Doi:10.1080/00313220601020064 - Wald_article.pdf. Can a company patent your DNA? Supreme Court hears BRCA gene case. The U.S. Supreme Court building. (Alex Brandon / Associated…) Can a private company own rights to your DNA? The nine justices of the Supreme Court will consider that question Monday as lawyers for Myriad Genetics make their best case that the company should be able to keep its patent on two genes known to influence the risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Challenging that notion will be lawyers representing the Assn. for Molecular Pathology and other scientific organizations, which argue that allowing genes to be patented slows or shuts down scientific research involving those genes.
Myriad Genetics is a Salt Lake City biotech company founded by University of Utah researchers. The company filed for a patent for the BRCA1 (short for BReast CAncer1) gene in 1994, and for the BRCA2 (short for BReast CAncer2) gene in 1995. Myriad, along with the University of Utah and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, applied for patents on the two genes.
Personalized medicine. Non-health DNA applications.